The House that We Build

The House That We Build: A Haunting of Our Parents

The house still stood, even after all these years. Leaning slightly westward with age, the shingles curling like dried petals, its gray frame cloaked in ivy and memory. It was ours once—The House That We Built, as our father used to say. Only, we never built it. We inherited it, like we inherited the sadness and silence that filled its rooms.

I returned alone one autumn afternoon, leaves snapping underfoot like brittle bones. My siblings had no interest. Ben hadn’t spoken to me since Mom’s funeral, and Claire lived too far, or so she claimed. “That place is cursed,” she had said. “Let it rot.” But something in me couldn’t let go. Maybe it was guilt. Maybe curiosity. Or maybe, the house still remembered us.

It had always been a strange place.

Our parents bought it in the early '80s—a sprawling farmhouse on the edge of town, surrounded by forest and mystery. Locals whispered of the previous owners who fled without a word. Our father dismissed the talk. “Just stories,” he’d say, lighting a cigarette with trembling hands. But I remember the way Mom’s eyes lingered on the upstairs hallway, the way she kept all the mirrors covered after dark.

As children, we learned not to ask questions. Not when the wind rattled the attic door in the dead of summer. Not when the walls whispered our names in tones not our own. And certainly not when we woke to find furniture rearranged or portraits turned to face the wall.

But the worst came when Dad started building the room.

We called it that because no one knew what it was for. A square structure in the backyard, too small to be useful, too large to ignore. He poured the foundation himself, muttering strange phrases under his breath. Latin, maybe. Or gibberish. At first, we thought it was a shed. But he never stored anything in it. Just locked the door and forbade us from going near.

Mom changed after that. She grew thin, skittish. Her laughter, once vibrant, became a brittle thing, like it hurt her to be happy. We found her sometimes staring into corners, whispering apologies to people who weren’t there. “It’s not my fault,” she’d sob. “He made me help.”

I didn’t understand then. But I do now.

Inside the house, time had curled in on itself. Everything was exactly as we left it. The wallpaper peeling in the same places, the floor groaning the same weary protest. I stepped into the living room, the stale scent of dust and lavender wrapping around me like a shroud. On the mantle, our family portrait stared back—Mom with her tight smile, Dad looking slightly off-camera, and us three kids caught mid-grin, unaware.

A cold wind blew through the room though the windows were shut.

That’s when I heard it.

Footsteps upstairs. Slow. Deliberate. Familiar.

I froze. No cars in the driveway. No animals large enough to make that sound. I should have run. But I went up.

The hallway was darker than it should’ve been, the bulb flickering overhead as if uncertain of its own existence. I passed my old room—door ajar, toy chest still open, as though I’d just stepped out to dinner. But the footsteps had gone further. Toward the master bedroom.

The door creaked open before I touched it.

Inside, the bed was neatly made. Dust coated every surface except for one—a small table by the window. On it sat a tape recorder. One of those old ones with buttons the size of postage stamps. It was already playing.

My father’s voice.

"I tried to stop it. God help me, I tried."

There was a pause. A shuffling sound.

"She said it needed to be built. Said the house needed balance, something to hold it back. We thought it was just paranoia. But she—she knew. That room, it's not a room. It's a lock. And the key..."

The tape ended with a violent hiss.

I staggered back, the breath knocked out of me by the weight of revelation. The room wasn’t to keep something out—it was to keep something in. And now, after years of abandonment, after Mom’s death and Dad’s slow descent into madness, the lock was weakening.

I went to the backyard.

The small structure loomed under the twilight sky, its door still padlocked, though rusted with time. The ground around it pulsed faintly, as if something beneath was breathing. I stood there, feeling my heartbeat echo the rhythm of whatever was trapped below.

We thought our parents were just troubled. Haunted by regrets, by the choices they made. But maybe they were haunted by something far older. Maybe they didn’t build the house for us—but for it.

I backed away, suddenly aware of eyes on me. Not from the house. From the trees. From the air itself. I had come looking for answers. But the house… the house remembered. And now it wanted to build again.

Behind me, the door creaked open.

The house wasn’t finished.

Neither was the haunting.